Remembering Rabbi Dr. Alvin Kass

Delivered by Rabbi Sam Levine on Friday, Oct. 31, 2025 at East Midwood Jewish Center

It is at the intersection of the professional and the personal where a clergyman does his hardest work. I am blessed and privileged to have spent countless hours, many of them right here on this bimah, with Rabbi Dr. Alvin Kass, a man who was my teacher and my friend.

Tomorrow, in synagogues all around the world, Jews will read parashat Lech Lecha, the Torah portion which introduces us to Abraham, the first Jew. God makes a covenant with Abraham at the beginning of the portion. God blesses him, and tells him that he will “be a blessing,” and then a few verses later, we read,

The Lord was seen by Avram and said:
I give this land to your seed!
He built an altar there to the Lord who had been seen by him.

He moved on from there to the highlands, east of Bet-El,
and spread his tent, Bet-El toward the sea and Ai toward the east.
There he built an altar to the Lord
and called out the name of the Lord.

12:7-8

Everywhere he traveled, Abraham built altars. Everywhere he traveled, Abraham brought holiness. Everywhere he went, he carried God’s name into the public square. His life was about taking his gifts, his own particular blessings, and sharing them with others.

We are all familiar with many stories of Rabbi Kass’ life as a chaplain with the NYPD. I feel that my role here, today, is to be a bridge between Alvin’s life story and the East Midwood Jewish Center, his home for nearly four decades, and, if I may take the liberty, to speak also for the Astoria Center of Israel, his first pulpit. This is a moment to pay tribute to Alvin’s yiddishkeit, his Judaism, which, together with being a cop, was at the very core of who he was.

As a student at the Hebrew Free School in Patterson New Jersey, Alvin received an exceptional grounding in Hebrew Language, Bible, Jewish history and religion, and the study of Talmud. In high school, he took a weekly trip into the city to attend a program at the Jewish Theological Seminary, further deepening his knowledge and introducing him to that august institution, populated at that time by many of the greatest Judaic minds of the 20th century. Alvin told me years ago that when he eventually enrolled in rabbinical school, he was singled out by Rabbi Saul Lieberman to join an elite group of students for advanced Talmud instruction. Lieberman, who at the time was either the dean or the rector of the rabbinical school, is to this day considered one of the great Talmud scholars. Advanced Talmud study requires the keenest mind, and Alvin was in an environment where his extraordinary mental acuity could be recognized, nurtured, and developed.

Of course, Rabbi Kass’ sermonizing and public speaking skills are legendary, and working so closely with him for 15 years gave me a glimpse into the mind. I remember one Saturday      after services, shortly after I began working here, when Alvin and Miryom asked me to co-host a homecoming lunch for college students, something that was done regularly back then. I was meant to be the fresh young face presented to these fresher younger faces. Rabbi Kass introduced a discussion topic, and the young people were invited to participate and answer questions. After three students made dramatically different and unconnected comments, Rabbi Kass took their remarks, synthesized them in the most extraordinary manner, and wove a response that made each of them feel heard and smart. To this day, I remember being in awe of the skill in doing that. The sermons and speeches were the end-product, but I felt as though I was getting a glimpse of the sausage-making – this is how this man’s mind works!

Apparently, while at the seminary, this public-speaking gift was apparent too, though I should preface this with a funny story that Danny told me. As a student at Columbia, the only non-A grade that Alvin ever received was a B+. In public speaking! This lower grade cost him the vaunted honor of valedictorian by some tiny sliver, giving him instead the second-place position of salutatorian. At the seminary, though, as he once told me, his public speaking gifts were recognized to the extent that he was exempted from having to take classes in homiletics, and I’m pretty sure he’s the only recipient of that exemption in the school’s history.

While he wasn’t raised in a particularly observant household, his family was dedicated to their faith. (When studying for his PhD under the tutelage of the great American historian Richard Hofstadter, also Jewish, Hofstadter once asked him “why does a smart kid like you keep kosher?”) Alvin possessed that deeply held sense of tradition and faith, married to his insatiable hunger for broader knowledge. He was the consummate Conservative Jew.

Coming out of the rich Jewish environment of Patterson, a place that produced many great Jewish minds, Alvin clearly absorbed the Jewish ethic of service, and his way of serving was going to be through a religious lens. The rest of his life was going to be about building altars, like Abraham, to serve God and to serve community. From the time that he graduated from rabbinical school until this past Tuesday night, his entire life was about service. After receiving his rabbinical ordination, he joined the Air Force and served as a chaplain, a calling (chaplaincy, that is) that he honored until his last breath. He answered the call to serve the NYPD, as well as other law-enforcement agencies, ministering to thousands upon thousands of men and women who themselves dedicated their lives to service. He served the Astoria Center of Israel, and he served the East Midwood Jewish Center, both with extraordinary distinction.

I think Alvin also saw his vocation as a teacher as an element of service. He continued teaching until just a few weeks ago, when he was hospitalized. It was an essential part of who he was. Possessing such a mastery of his subject material, and given such remarkable gifts of communication, teaching was very much a calling for him. Any one of the many thousands of students who were privileged to study with him will attest to his erudition, his clarity of thought, and his intellectual generosity.

As for EMJC, our community, when he came here in 1978, he was well aware of the shoes that he was filling. His predecessor, Rabbi Harry Halpern, was a giant figure in the Conservative movement, and a force in New York City. He was also a nationally famous orator in his own right. In many ways, Alvin was the perfect person to succeed him, but he was always mindful of the fact that this was Rabbi Halpern’s congregation. But it was Rabbi Kass who led this community into a more contemporary expression of Judaism. The over-the-top formality of services here relaxed into something easier, if still highly dignified. It was Rabbi Kass who shepherded the community through the painful transition to egalitarianism, granting women full and equal status in all religious matters. He did this out of conviction, at once understanding the justice of the cause as well as the inevitable direction that contemporary Judaism was taking and not wanting his congregation to be left behind.

The kids told me that he was always thankful to EMJC for being a home to him and Miryom, his most beloved partner in life; for being a place where he could raise his kids; for being a place where he and Miryom knew the children could receive an outstanding Jewish education; for being a place where, thanks to our in-house caterers, Newman and Leventhal, he could get a hot dog at any time of the day or night. He was also grateful for being able to lead a synagogue that was one of the crown jewels of the Conservative movement, and being able to focus on sermonizing because there was such a considerable support staff here to help relieve other duties. And finally, he was mindful of the fact that EMJC welcomed his dual loyalties, not only tolerating, but celebrating his work with the NYPD.

​Just as he always saw this as Rabbi Halpern’s room, I have always seen it as Rabbi Kass’ room. I first walked into this sanctuary in 2002, still a cantorial student at the seminary, as green as could be. What I absorbed from Rabbi Kass in our 17 years of working together is incalculable. While my own gifts are a fraction of his, his dignity, his graciousness, his unflappability, have all had a profound influence on my own rabbinate and my cantorate. There is an almost comically notorious relationship between rabbis and cantors; between us, there was never a moment of strife or tension. He always treated me with the utmost respect, embracing me and my family from the moment we arrived. He possessed a graciousness born of a fully-developed sense of self-confidence. He knew who he was, and he had nothing to prove to anyone. It was about service, giving, and utilizing the gifts that he was given for the greater good. What a life.

​In all the circumstance of today’s proceedings, in all of the celebration of Rabbi Kass’ accomplishments and his professional legacy, Sarah, Lewis, and Danny remind us that Alvin was also a devoted husband to Miryom, his other half – the two of them really were like a single organism – a proud and loving father to the kids and their spouses, Sarah and Debby, and an inexpressibly proud grandfather to Judah, Bennet, and Nava. How his eyes would light up whenever he spoke of the three of you. He was a friend to so many – a real friend, who would go out of his way to help you, quietly and modestly. He was the ubiquitous Rabbi Dr. Kass, Chief Chaplain of the NYPD, and he was also Alvin.

T'hi nishmato tzrurah bitzror hachayim – May his soul be bound up in the everlasting bond of life.

Zecher tzadik livracha – May the memory of the righteous be for a blessing.